In the grip of our BlackBerry

The world won't end if you turn off your phone once in a while; in fact, you'll get by just fine.

emirati columnist Fatima for columnist picture. Photographed in New York city.
photo by Matt Carr *** Local Caption *** emirati columnist Fatima for columnist picture. Photographed in New York city.
photo by Matt Carr
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The world won't end if you turn off your phone once in a while; in fact, you'll probably get by just fine. Walking around campus recently I overheard a fellow student exclaim, "I just can't live without my crackberry." After I had worked out that she was talking about the addictive nature of her BlackBerry, my immediate thought was, "How sad." I am the first to admit that I love my BlackBerry. The technology is amazing. I got one last summer when I was working in Spain and it was great to be able to use its messenger service to chat to friends all round the world for no charge. Being a compulsive "texter", I no longer had to worry about the cost of my international texting habits. For someone who has been on the move my whole life, it's nice to find small ways in which I can keep in contact with people I don't get to see that often. In addition, the information I can now get to in a matter of seconds at the touch of a button is astonishing.

But as with all great advancements there is a downside. In my freshman year at university, I had to drag new friends away from their computer screens, where they would spend hours browsing YouTube, so that they would leave their rooms and actually experience New York City. At least you can get away from a desktop computer. Now that my friends all have smartphones, they take their antisocial tendencies with them: how many times have you been talking to someone and realised their eyes are fixed on their phone? It's so easy to give in to temptation: once I got a BlackBerry, it was almost impossible to ignore the flashing red notification light and I found myself checking it compulsively. Crackberry indeed.

In the end, I did a revolutionary thing: I switched it off. Internet access in the palm of your hand can be useful when, as happened recently, the router in my mother's house died and we were left without the internet for a few days. But is that really such a disaster unless you need to get online for work? Let's face it, most of us use computers for entertainment. Sure, I couldn't stream live sports or watch some television shows, but I found many other ways to keep myself occupied.

I chose not to take my computer with me when we went off for a family holiday for a week. Unlike my siblings, all of whom took their laptops, I liked to think I could get by on the company of my family, whom I don't get to see very much. I might have borrowed the computer once or twice to send an e-mail here and there. Otherwise, I sat back and enjoyed life, and after the initial withdrawal period when you're wondering how you're going to survive without surfing the web, you get by just fine.

Unlike a number of people I know, I would rather interact with people face to face. I don't enjoy spending hours in front of a computer. I'd rather be out, doing things. Skype and e-mail and all of that are wonderful tools, but I don't think we notice to what extent our lives have become dominated by the virtual world. At dinner the other day, almost everyone was sending messages or checking their Facebook and e-mail accounts, ignoring the people sitting around them.

So make a belated resolution to turn off your phone once in a while. Believe me, whatever it is, it can wait.